Villagers watch Prime Minister Narendra Modi launch the Digital India Week through video conferencing in Madhya Pradesh
The Digital India week launched with much fanfare by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has evoked a mixed response from rural areas in central India.
In this corner of Madhya Pradesh, people were seen leaving the gram panchayat premises disappointed, as they could not interact with PM Modi through video conference as promised.
Jitendra Makwana, a resident of Chander village, 60 kilometres from Indore city, told NDTV, "Our panchayat officials had told us that PM will interact with us through video conferencing. Preparations for the event were going on in my village for days, but that that did not happen."
District administration officials said the interaction with the PM - which was supposed to happen across two dozen locations in the country, was never a certainty.
A senior official, Vikram Malviya, said, "We had official orders for video conferencing which happened. May be the interaction did not happen due to the tight schedule of PM."
People, though, watched the launch through video links. And there were some villagers who welcomed the campaign despite the hiccups.
Farmer Lakhan Solanki said," We will benefit from schemes at home now through mobile we will be able to do it. It's the beginning... now 100 of them know about internet, similarly as the campaign progresses more of the villagers will become tech savvy."
Under the Digital India campaign, the NDA government has ambitious plans to provide internet connectivity to 2.5 lakh village panchayats across the country through optic fibre cable network by March 2016.